Growing a Farmer: Book 1, Post 2

What the Book is About

Kurt Timmermeister’s Growing a Farmer tells the story of Kurt’s experience as a city dweller-turned-farmer in the Pacific Northwest. His journey begins in downtown Seattle, where he owned and ran a small cafe in the early 1990s. Having grown tired of his studio apartment, Kurt began searching the area to buy a house, but came up empty due to the expensive real estate market. While researching alternatives, he stumbled upon a four-acre property within his budget on nearby Vashon Island. Inexperienced and unsure, Kurt made the leap and bought himself a farm. As time went on, Kurt founded several Seattle-based restaurants. For a period, he split his time between working in the city and experimenting on the farm. Kurt fell in love with Vashon’s peaceful island lifestyle and grew curious about the farming possibilities on his new (and expanding) plot of land. Through reading books about farming and learning from other members of the Vashon community, he developed a new goal: creating independent sources of food. Concurrently, Kurt grew a distaste for the frozen chicken breasts and packaged beef served at his restaurants. This inner conflict ultimately caused him to get out of the restaurant game and farm full-time. Timmermeister’s book delves into his endeavors to grow food and raise livestock on the farm. Through various trial and error, Timmermeister forges a deep value for humane practices and homegrown sustenance.

How the Book Affected Me

As I emphasized in my earlier post, this book is mainly appealing to me due to my connection to Seattle. Like the author, I have spent years living, studying, and working in and around downtown Seattle. I have seen it grow and morph into the large, metropolitan hub that it is today. I am fortunate to be from such a dynamic and innovative area, but I also get tings of nostalgia every time I return home and find it different from the time before. However, about an hour north of the city is a place called Whidbey Island. My parents own a house there, and several times every year (for the past 20+ years) my family travels to Whidbey to relax, adventure and bond while surrounded by relatively undisturbed nature. Beyond my direct connection to Timmermeister’s experience, I found myself deeply affected by Kurt’s experience with meat products (and the animals they come from). Early in the book, Kurt describes how the frozen chicken breasts and packaged beef served at his restaurants began to disgust him. Later, while describing the butchering process of his own livestock, he admits that this brutal process is messy and chaotic. This section made me a bit queasy, especially considering that large-scale industrial operations are surely more violent and unsanitary than Kurtwood Farms.  

General Takeaways / Why You Might Want to Skip It

Right off the bat you can tell that despite his plainspoken voice, Kurt Timmermeister is a unique and bright individual. While he owes much of his success to this high intellect, it also causes him to come off as elitist and self-indulgent at some points in the book. My main criticism relates to Timmermeister’s tendency to bluntly state polarizing, absolutist statements about how he sees the world. While this is fine in itself, on several occasions Kurt’s own experiences (with topics such as bee keeping, guns, chickens, etc.) contradict the statements he previously made, and yet he fails to acknowledge that his rigid preconceptions might be flawed. I’m a liberal Seattleite who is all-too familiar with the elitist ‘snowflake’ approach to the world, and even I became tired of Timmermeister’s unapologetic hypocrisy. Moving forward: Many of Timmermeister’s descriptions paint elaborate, colorful representations of various moments in his life. However, others seem to drone on for pages. Perhaps a reader interested in starting her own farm might appreciate these descriptions of his agricultural procedures, but the average joe will feel tempted to skip ahead. My last warning to those thinking of reading this book: Timmermeister does not recount his experience in chronological order. While the beginning is easy to follow, the later chapters are categorized by farming activity. For example: [Chapter] Nine: Vegetables, [Chapter] Ten: Fowl. This structure aids those looking for a ‘how to’ guide, but also hinders Timmermeister’s ability to construct a narrative.